WorkDocs - Outcasts (Patreon)

After their separation in Outpost, Dain has been searching for his alien partner Ozias for many years. He finally tracks him down on Planet X-2, a bleak world at the far end of the Forbidden Zone. A faint tracking signal leads our hero to an abandoned location, the place where once a notorious imperial detention colony was located. After a hasty evacuation of the outpost, the military guards left the Outcasts behind, locked up for eternity in blocks of frozen carbonite.

You can download the PDF file at the bottom of the post.

1. Introduction

The opening scene introduces us to the new environment of this series. It’s a hostile and barren place, with toxic fumes, towering pillars of salt and creepy and crawling creatures. It’s a dangerous world for a lonely easy rider.

For the alien scenery, I used Planet X-2 and some Badlands Landscape Props. For the creatures, I used the Ravager Drone and, above all, the Dune Hunter, “a carnivorous alien predator that stalks the deserts and eats just about anything it can find”. Both monsters were created by Herschel Hoffmeyer, a 3D digital artist specialized in modelling prehistoric and alien creatures.

For this opening scene, I was inspired by the illustrations of Zdeněk Burian, a Czech painter, book illustrator and paleo artist whose work played a central role in the visual reconstruction of the prehistoric world. As a kid, I had a large book containing many of his magnificent illustrations, and although hugely outdated by that time, his reconstructions of extinct life are very convincing. They have something mysterious about them, and I spent many hours gazing at those fascinating scenes of a long-lost world.

2. The Detention Compound

After slaying the dragon, the hero of our story arrives on his iron stallion at the gates of the notorious detention compound. It’s here that his alien lover is held captive.

For the exterior, I used Stonemason’s Desert Outpost. It’s described by the vendor as a deplorable colony of trash and knavery. Isolated from civilization by a desert expanse, it’s the home to thieves, smugglers and anyone who has ventured south of the law. The model has clearly been influenced by the Star Wars brand. So, I thought it might be interesting to add a few more recognizable features from the movies.

Some of you might have recognized the Starbird crest, the symbol of the Rebel Alliance. Further on one of the captives is wearing the imperial battle armour. Finally, if you are a fan of Star Wars, you’ll probably remember the scene where the character Han Solo was frozen into a solid block of carbonite.

From what I understood, Solo was frozen because the actor who played him, Harrison Ford, was not satisfied with the character and wasn’t sure he wanted to do another film. Instead of killing the character entirely off, the director, George Lucas, decided to stash the Solo in the freezer for a while, till the actor had made up his mind. Sounds like the perfect solution (plenty of bad actors come to mind that could use some permafrost), but I guess Ford eventually came around.

Although I’ve never been able to watch an entire Star Wars movie, the image of the frozen man somehow stuck with me, and I thought it interesting to use something similar in this story.

For the interior, I used the Sci-Fi Atmosphere Processing Deck, a dark and menacing sci-fi corridor environment that (as has been commented) resembles very much the creepy alien technology by H.R. Giger. He was a somewhat morbid artist from Switzerland who created dark and mysterious images by blending human physiques with machines. He’s most famous for his visual designs for the first Alien movie. Very inspiring work, but a bit too scary for this series.

3. dForces

While Dain is doing his best to awake his lover from his carbonite sleep (…in a fully consensual way!), a sinister petrol drone detects the increasing activity in the compound. A nearby imperial shuttle picks up the alarm signal. A dark force is approaching Planet X-2.

As several of you rightly commented on my previous update, the dress/undress scene was a bit abrupt. So I added a few images to make the transition from fully closed to the full monty a bit smoother. And it works much better. Undressing a 3D model is always a bit tricky, for there’s just so much one can do with a standard garment. There’re a few models with some limited poses, but much has to be done manually afterwards. So, unbuttoning, loosening, opening, pulling down, or getting out of clothes involves a lot of dragging, morphing and deforming. And in the end, it never really looks very realistic. So, I always try to avoid that bit in the series ;o)

Making clothes look more natural for DAZ models has however been improved much with the introduction of a tool called dForce. It’s a physics simulation engine that was designed to accurately simulate the physical collisions and interaction of soft materials such as fabrics and hair movements. So far, I’ve only seen a few clothing models that can be fully undressed as well (Like the Playful Everyday Poses and Clothes sets by Aeon Soul ”…to explore the more carefree aspect of everyday life”), but the first results are very promising.

As mentioned above, I’m not really much of a Star Wars fan, I mostly enjoy the settings, but since I’ve started adding elements from the movies, why not go all the way? I wanted to add another storyline to the series to raise the tension and make it more exciting. I think that an approaching dark force will do the trick, and Darth Vader is perfect for that. He’s, of course, the most iconic figure, with his black uniform, creepy skull mask and shiny phallic hood. However, I’m still not sure what to do with him in the series. When revealing his identity, in the end, I think I’ll have to come up with something better than that heavy breathing, disfigured and tormented movie character that says: "... I'm your father!"

Test renders

Related sections of this project:

• Wallpaper Oct 2021
• Wallpaper  Nov 2021
• WorkDocs
• Gallery
• Add-Ons

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